Rare images taken by a Japanese space probe during a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid have revealed that the space rock resembled a snowman, scientists said Monday.
The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 skimmed asteroid Torifune on Sunday in a mission that demonstrated the ability to deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth.
A new image released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Monday could aid such efforts, as researchers say near-Earth asteroids vary in their size, shape and surface characteristics.
"The moment I actually saw this image and the scientific data—it really gave me goosebumps," JAXA scientist Yuya Mimasu told reporters, adding the asteroid "personally looked like a snowman."
The black-and-white image, captured by a telescopic camera, showed what appeared to be two round objects joined together.
"You can actually see the rocks... I really hadn't expected to be able to take a photo like this, so I'm absolutely over the moon," he said.
The mission follows NASA's successful 2022 test that changed the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos by deliberately smashing it with a spacecraft.
Torifune was known to have an elongated shape, but its details were unknown.
After the Torifune mission, the space probe is expected to attempt in 2031 a "rendezvous"—a maneuver in which it flies alongside or touches down on a space rock to gather detailed data—with an asteroid called 1998KY26.
Source: Phys.org
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